


Strongjaw & The Dish

by My_Bardic_Inspiration



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Chapter 5 is the bad one, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2020-10-25 18:47:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20729006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/My_Bardic_Inspiration/pseuds/My_Bardic_Inspiration
Summary: This is just smutty/romantic fanfic about Grog Strongjaw and Trish the Dish.   Obviously, some spoilers for Campaign 1 will be present.





	1. Chapter 1

Grog Strongjaw, member of Vox Machina, Grand Poohbah de Doink of All of This and That, who had faced dragons, ended wannabe Gods, who had saved the world countless times... could not sleep. He remembered a dream of fighting this huge guy with a hammer, a fight he won quite naturally. That should have made him feel good, but there was a niggling kind of thing that made it feel uncomfortable. He had the feeling his friends were upset with him. Like he'd done something that let them down, but he couldn't remember doing anything to earn the looks he had caught them giving him earlier.

His room left behind him, he had left Castle Whitestone and prowled the late night streets. Peace was elusive and two kegs in, he still felt not a mote better than he had when he'd first thrown his covers off. Something was bothering him, but when he tried to think about it, he just gave himself a headache. He turned back toward the castle, neither peaceful nor tired, but the walking wasn't doing him any good and he didn't want his friends thinking he'd left them like Scanlan had. _Like Vax had._ The thought snuck in there and he frowned, pushing it away with a little grumble.

As he approached the castle, he heard the unmistakable sound of swordplay. A little flame flared in his core and he ran toward the sound, hoping to lose himself in a fight. He rounded the wall and, to his disappointment, realized it was only a few soldiers training. The group of six figures in leather armor were all attacking in turns, an armored figure who was deflecting every blow, and dealing damage of their own with fists, kicks, the pommel of the sword, even the flat swung out to send one greenhorn stumbling forward nearly onto his face. All the while, the armored one stayed balanced on a chunk of wood no wider than his own bootprint.

One by one, the weary fighters fell away, their panting breath misty in the cool night air, obviously worn out. Those who had been children on the cusp when the Briarwoods were defeated but were becoming men and women now. They were old enough to remember. To have felt the most impotent. Too young to fight, too old to put it behind them. Obviously, this generation was one of the most determined that Whitestone remained free. He admired them for that, if not for their skills which were, at the moment, shit.

"That'll do for tonight." A voice firm and feminine at the same time rung out. "Wash and to your beds." The helmet removed with one hand, sweat-damp brunette hair coming loose in spots from the bun she wore it in. "Tomorrow will be here before you know it."

Trisha.

He almost called out a hearty 'Bidet!' to invite her to share a drink, maybe have a re-match of the arm wrestling match, but something stopped him. He thought back to that Winter's Crest festival. A day so filled with the pride of a job well-done, ending the threat of the Briarwoods. Basking in the adoration of the people. So ignorant of what was to come. In the time since he had thought of her often. Not all the time, but more than he thought of any other lady who wasn't in Vox Machina.

He'd felt embarrassed when she'd beaten him in the arm wrestling. Not because she was a girl, but because afterward, he couldn't stop thinking of how her hand felt in his. How pretty her eyes were and the way her smile changed her whole face. He'd felt a little jealous when she'd taken Tary off with her, and the details that the man gave the morning after didn't help much with putting her out of his thoughts. Tary had been terrified, but he, himself, had spent many a lonely night tossing and turning and thinking about what Tary had only hinted. Even when he and his friends played Bunions & Flagons, where he could create a world all of his own making, she showed up, and like in his secret dreams, she wanted him to be her hero, her champion.

He turned to sneak away but bumped into a stack of staves that fell over in a clattering pile onto the ground. Sheepishly he winced and glanced back, hoping she hadn't heard it.

"You." Her lips twisting into a small smirk before she cocked her eyebrow at him. "To what do we owe the honor of this visit?"

"Um uh..." He felt off balance for a moment. "I'm just um... checking the new recruits. Gotta know that everything's ship-shaped you know. Part'a m'job." He stood up straight and tall, his beefy arms crossed over the massive expanse of his bare chest.

"Ah." Her eyes squinted a bit as if she didn't believe him, but she shrugged afterward. "I thought you might finally have come for that rematch." She began to undo the laces on the gauntlets that covered her forearms. "I'm pretty tired, been on my feet for most of the day so... " a cocky grin taking hold of her lips. "I suppose you might have had a chance to take me this time." Her hand lifted, finger and thumb barely apart. "A tiny one."

He might have been able to refrain from rising to the bait if, a half-second later, her eyes had not dipped down beneath the Belt of Dwarvenkind. "Hey now... hold on a minute." He heard a voice in his head that sounded remarkably like one of his friends telling him to play it cool, but he wasn't a very good listener sometimes. "I could take you. I could take you allllll niiiight long." He said it, and only after a moment of hearing it echo back at him did he realize that she might not take that as meaning arm wrestling.

"Well then..." She walked away, pulling her armor off bit by bit, the sweat-damp linen of her blouse and trousers clinging to her in a way that made him want to look away for some reason, though his eyes were not listening to that part, taking in the curves and lines of her all-too-female frame. She turned around and set her hands on her hips. "Bring it, big man." She dropped a bit into a fighter's stance, an arm lifted, palm up, fingers crooked in a motion that matched her words.

With a low growl of pleasurable anticipation of a bit of sparring, he stripped off his weapons, not wanting to hurt her accidentally, and stalked toward her.

Reaching where she stood, he swung out, intending just to push her down with a blow to her right shoulder, holding back his strength of course. The fist like stone struck against her shoulder and sent her stumbling to the side, a puff of dust as she slid to catch herself in a half-crouch, her smile widening.

"Oh, come on, Poohbah... I'm not made of glass." She sprang up with a speed he hadn't really expected and both hands, clasped together, raised over her head as she jumped and brought them down toward his head. The combined might of her fists struck him directly on the top of the skull, the pain like a wave that made his eyes go unfocused as it ran down his neck and body. The twinge remained throbbing at the spot where neck met skull as he grabbed hold of her waist once she landed and threw her as far as he could backward into the fighting yard.

She'd hurt him only fleetingly, he'd taken worse injuries countless times, but he was in a rough mood when he'd come upon this challenge and something in him snapped a bit. He was reacting from a place of feeling, not thought, and even with her sturdy build she went flying several feet before landing with a 'whoomf!', spread out in a cloud of dust. Arms and legs sprawled, eyes shut, still as a stone.

"Oh, shit!" Grog hurried over to where she lay, fearing that he'd actually hurt her. Leaning down over her, he reached out to move a strand of hair from her forehead, thinking, for a moment, that he should go fetch one of his healing potions or something when her eyes flicked open, her legs winding around his own and with a cocky grin, she rolled both forward and to the side. His captured leg gave and he tumbled down, trying not to land on her. He got a face full of dust as he hit the training grounds on his palms and stomach.

An instant later, she had sprung onto his back and grabbed hold of his arm, attempting to twist it up between his shoulder blades. He felt her strong hands around his wrist, using the element of surprise and his own distracted mind's slowness to gain the advantage. Before he knew it she had the leverage required to press his arm into a very painful posture.

"Submit!" She laughed. Honestly laughed as she leaned her weight into the work of keeping him on his face in the dirt. He couldn't deny there was a small tingle of excitement that had little to do with fighting when he became aware of her body on top of his.

"I don't know the meaning of the word!" he growled. He did, actually, know that one, but like 'napkin' and 'sing', while he knew them, that didn't mean he ever used them in regard to himself. The pressure on his shoulder joint was getting stronger and so he did as she had, tumbling sideways with the intention of dragging her back down onto the ground. She had only two options. Let go of his arm, or be drug under him as he rolled like a log down a hill. She chose the former, but it still left her off balance and she stumbled, ass over teakettle, landing across his chest, his arms quickly grappling her as he continued the roll, pinning her down beneath him.

"You submit." he grit out between his teeth, not yet raging, but his mood was sour already and if she insisted on a real fight, he'd be forced to give her one.

Strands that had come loose from her bun lay across her face, her already sun-kissed skin darkened by the dust that covered it, the slightly pinked line of the scar only a bit lighter than the rest, it was taken in but swiftly eclipsed by the bright, sharp emeralds of her eyes on his face and the contrasting white of her teeth as she burst out laughing, her head arching backward as she did so. "No.. No.." Her tone made it seem she was being tickled instead of being forced to capitulate. "I shall never give in, Grand Poohbah Caterpillar Beard!"

The instant later, he felt a tickle as something twitchy moved along his cheek and a quick shake of his head dislodged the fat green caterpillar to plop onto the ground beside them. It rested only a moment before striving with all its ability to crawl away with haste. He watched it go, all those tiny little feet in constant motion, the body undulating, moving off at least seven inches before he came back to himself and realized he was still lying there on top of her, hands wrapped around her upper arms. Looking down, she was making that face people made when they were trying not to laugh because it wasn't polite, even when a thing was like, super funny. "Stop laughing at me."

Those greens glinted as she looked up at him, lips twitching as she worked to keep her giggles in. "Do you... see me laughing?" Her brows lifted, the smirk growing more obvious, the cracks in the facade would break the mask and she'd bust out any second, he knew. He couldn't bear to hear her laugh at him again, so he did what seemed the best way to prevent it. He kissed her.

The crushing press of his mouth sealed away any sound but a low growl in his throat, the warmth of her lips tight under his for a moment then they softened and she was kissing him back. He demanded her to allow his tongue to taste her, and she drug it in with a soft suction and the swift return of her own to plunder into the ale-tainted depths of his mouth. He felt her under him, arching, pressing her body into him with slow teasing grinds of her hips that were making him insane.

The kiss broke for a half-second, and she leaned up to his ear, saying something, he could hear her, but not comprehend beyond his want to just have her there and then. He realized, after another moment or two, that her grinding had just been an attempt to get him to get off of her. They were laying in the middle of the training yard and while she didn't seem to be angry, she didn't really seem to want to be interrupted. That was easy enough to do. He rocked back onto his feet and drug her with him, swinging her legs around his waist and with a half-dozen long strides, had slipped into the shadows between buildings and leaned against the wall, easily holding her up with one arm around her waist and the strength of her own binding grip with her legs around his.

"This wasn't what I meant by 'out of sight'." Her hands moved across his chest, trim nails digging lightly into his skin. "We could get a room. There's an inn just down the..."

"Nuh-uh." he shook his head. "Can't wait." his hands dropping to curve around her backside and pull her tighter against the more-than-evident hardness that was barely secured by the laces of his trousers, bending his head to kiss her again. Her fingers slid across the back of his bare head, holding him against her, arms across his shoulders lifting her up and lowering herself slowly, dragging her body against him and making his skin ache at the roughness of the cloth.

"Mmm. Alright." Her lips swollen, her chin reddened by the rough grind of his beard against her skin. "I know a closer place." She unwound her legs, not that it did her any good, he still easily held her up against him, her arms draped around his neck. He was reminded, faintly, of when that weird duck guy, Lionel, had hung off his neck in the bar fight. That had made him feel very uncomfortable, but this was very different. This body woke his nerves, made his blood burn and rush in aching throbs in more places than he could count. She lowered her chin, looking up at him expectantly, and he sighed heavily and put her down.

She grabbed his arm and tugged him along toward a small wooden building a bit away from the barracks and the yard... The door opened, she tugged one last time before letting go and he bent his head, stepping inside into the dark.


	2. Chapter 2

Trisha stepped away, and a second later, a light flared. The lantern opened to spill the light across the room and he blinked a moment before he could get a good look around. It was part stable, part seamstress shop, it seemed. There were baskets of cloth, long strips of fabric with various scissors in pockets down the length, a box where he could see a few long threads sticking out and a large table. There was also a large manger of a sort. A huge square filled with hay that had a short front. He doubted though that any animals ever ate it. Further investigation, and a few seconds more of mulling over the clues and he figured out where he was. The place where they made dummies for combat training.

Wordlessly, she began walking back toward him, her hands lifting to her head, undoing the restraints that held her hair in check, the waves tumbling down around her face, a mussed caress of sweat-damp waves brushing her shoulders. He felt another pang of conflicted sensation. Oh, the familiar ache in his loins, yes, but there was another feeling that he didn't know what to call. He didn't have time to think about it though as her palms hit him in the chest and her fingers wound into his beard, pulling him to bend down enough that she could press her mouth to his again.

All thought fled, and he snatched her up, the strong arms about her waist pulling her against him as her own arms encircled his neck. The taste of her, slightly salty and warm, her moans heady against his tongue. THUMP... THUMP... he barely registered that the sound was her boots hitting the floor as her feet hovered above it. The kiss broke, breathing soft and quick as she grinned.

"Clothes. Off." Fingers tugged at the leather strap across his chest. "Though you have a head start." Leaning in, quick as a snake, her teeth nipping at the curve of his lip in the framing of dark hair, though she made no actual contact. He needed no further invitation, loosening his grip to let her slide down over the length of his body until her now stocking feet touched the ground again. The next few moments were busied by a hasty working to get out of the clothes that, despite being far less in number than her own, were more difficult to get off. Leather was not as light as padded linen and his haste was slowed when he glanced up and caught her bent in half, pushing her pants down her legs, her back to him.

Tary had mentioned softness in women after she'd drug him off, and he'd dreamt, but the reality hit him hard like a fist into his gut. There was no excess fat, but her body was undeniably female, hips and buttocks rounded, long legs well-muscled and thick. Her skin was marked with small stripes of injuries long healed, scars that he wanted to feel, to taste. He wanted to name them all, know their history, her story. She turned and set her palms on her hips, his eyes raking over her naked body and she didn't flinch or demur. Instead, her hands moved across her belly, a tickling pet of fingers along the plane of her waist, gliding up over the fullness of her breasts overflowing her cupping hands but he knew they would fit perfectly in his.

"If you don't hurry up, I'm going to start without you." Her cocky grin flashing in the low lantern light, and he obeyed, hastily removing his boots and pants. He glanced up, looking for the surprised gasp and shock that he got from people when his giant lineage's gift was revealed. She didn't look shocked at all. She just looked ... hungry. "I thought maybe it was an exaggeration, but mmm... no. " Moving toward him, her eyes on his own. When she was near enough, he twitched at the touch of her hand along his shaft, like the railing of a staircase traced as she stepped up to him. "Question is, do you know how to use it?" Her head bent, her lips trailing gentle kisses over the tattooed lines of his chest, her fingers firm in their petting strokes.

He twitched at the rush of sensation. Her hands were not soft or gentle, but she wasn't hurting him. Quite the opposite. She was the familiarity of his own fingers' strength with the benefit of being utterly foreign. There was something digging into his back and he faintly realized he was leaning against the wall as her kisses began to trail in a sweeping path downward. He reached behind himself and jerked the hook out of the wall with little trouble, tossing it aside with a ping so he could enjoy this fully.

He'd dreamt it, but the reality was so much better. Looking down at her, on her knees before him. Not because he was a conqueror, but because he loved watching women like that. It was rare though to see one who was so gung-ho about it. She had no restraint, no qualms, no fear as her hands guided him to the warmth of her mouth, taking him within, tongue rolling and he gripped the wall, basking in the view of his prodigious girth being swallowed.

Hot saliva tickled downward only to be caught by stroking fingers and worked into the skin, the sound of her mouth striving, suckling, moaning, echoed in the small room and his fingers left the wall to tangle in her hair, dragging her closer until she fought, shocked a bit at how long it took, how much she took. Oh it was amazing. Panting through gritted teeth when the back of her throat was struck and she wanted more. He wanted more too. He wanted everything.

Gently as he could he pulled her away, her tongue lashing at him as heaving breaths rushed across his spit-slick tip, her eyes glittering up like emeralds in the flushed pink of her face. He needed to kiss those reddened lips and he crouched down as he pulled her up, the kiss rough and hard as he was. Dragging her with him onto the floor, needing to ease the lust, but a part of him relished the moments between, hoping it wouldn't be the last time he got to taste the faint hint of his own self on her tongue.

Hands roamed, covering her breasts, firm muscle over the full swells kneading, teasing until her nipples were like iron against his palms. Her own hands were pulling at him, demanding, like the spurred boots of a rider against a horse's side urging him to go faster but he needed for a moment more to just learn her body's contours. She purred almost, a low growling sound in her throat. "Do I need to throw you down and take what I need or ... are you going to be a good boy and get on with it?"

He lifted his hand from her breast and laid it over her lips, his eyes narrowed in an intimidating scowl. He was having fun, and he didn't want to end it just yet. His brows shot up though to feel her tongue working wet caresses against his palm, her own brows waggling saucily. Minx. He shifted his weight to rise up a bit and slide his other hand down between her thighs. Sweet Gods she was on fire! He pet lightly, teasingly, watching her greens go dark over the gray of his hand, rolling back a little as he showed her just a little of what he had learned over the years.

A juicy peach, soft and bare as his own skin excepting his face, no doubt done for cleanliness rather than anything inborn. Slippery crease invaded by his second finger, slickly stroking along the parted lips in the same cadence as his hard shaft was being rubbed against her hip. He needed to be inside her. A curl of his finger and he was, pushing into the sodden furnace, her moan muffled as he did so. His hand slid away from her lips.

"There. I like to hear." He confessed as her insides clung to his finger as he worked in and out slowly. "All of it." The squelching sound of his pistoning digit, the moans, the panting breathing.

"Mmm!" She bit her lip and her hips lifted into his touch. One hand of hers slid to pet against his still-damp cock and her other ran down his arm as far as possible, resting on his forearm as the muscles beneath flexed and tensed with every bend of his wrist. "More... oh, please!" he grinned a bit to hear her beg. With a slow withdrawal, he drug the honey from within and lifted it to his lips, tasting her without shame, noting the slight look of surprise that flitted across her features, but it was burned away in the flare of lust that burned the next instant.

Something in him shifted a bit, a want as strong as his urge to pound into that heavenly depth until he could only feel ecstasy. He wanted to make her beg again. He wanted her to crave his touch like suude and know that nobody else could ever make her feel like he did. The hand lowered again. "I can do 'more'." His bass rumbling like thunder despite the low volume, a threat of the best sort. The index and pink pressed against the soft mound, the paired fingers between them, in tandem, pushed inside her, stretching her faintly to accommodate the thickness and prepare her for the inevitable.

He shuddered at the bliss that watching her gasp and feeling her thighs spreading wider for him, denying him nothing. "Talk to me." he raked his fingers in and out, firm but careful not to hurt her as she felt so perfectly snug against his curling strokes.

Her mouth moved but no sound came out for a few seconds. "How...what do you ... want to hear?" Her hands now moved to cradle her breasts, pinching and tweaking those rose-hued nipples.

"You." His pace quickening, seeking and finding the little spot inside her, her eyes widening when he did. He knew he had her. He basked in her moans, in her pleas but he wasn't going to let himself succumb to the temptation to bury himself balls deep in her until she was wriggling like a fish on a hook, screaming his name.

"Ummm! Oh, Gods, that's ... oh, yes. Grog yes." Her head back, her legs quivering as she lifted her hips faintly in the offering. 

The lurid suckling sound of her nether regions being fingered expertly was not as sexy to him as hearing her say his name. "Say it again!" he barked softly, his cock so hard he thought she must be part Medusa.

"Grog... Grog please!" He felt her insides flutter and he knew how close she was. "Please fuck me."

"Not yet. You're goin' down." He grinned and shifted to press his thigh over hers, his foot against her other leg, pressing to spread her wider, aware that she was leaving a sticky puddle on the hard wood floor. "I win. Say it... say I win."

She fought it. He could see the same tough resolution in her face she'd worn when, hand to hand, she'd pushed his fist to the tabletop and become champion. Her head shook, back and forth, unspoken 'no' but her lips betrayed her. "Fine! Yes."

"Say. It." he teased her with gentleness now and she glared. "Say 'Grog is the champion'." it was his turn to smirk as she wriggled and shifted and fought to get back that stronger stroke that was now a tickle of torment by compare.

It wasn't degradation he was after, it was just playful banter, he thought. He didn't like that he'd lost, but he accepted it. He was honestly very proud of her. He just... he wanted her to see him other than 'that other goliath I beat once'.

"Grog... is the champion." She hissed through her teeth. "Will you just fuck me now!?" She wriggled against his hand, frustration on her face.

"Mmm... no." He redoubled his efforts, finding that place inside her where he knew he could leave her undone, tearing through every restraint she might throw up to keep herself from submitting. She screamed and clapped her hand over her mouth as she bucked up off the floor, his work rewarded with the tightened undulation of her inside muscles, wave after wave assaulting her, curling her toes, his fingers crushed over and again as he flinched and flicked and sent her over the edge again and again until she was a quivering mess of lust-honey and sweat.

He didn't give her a moment to catch her breath. He rolled and knelt between her thighs and pushed himself into her by half, spreading her to a point that, any other moment, might have been pain. He growled and staked his claim, pulling her to him, his hard fingers on her hips. Words, never his strong suit, abandoned him completely in the tide of pleasure. She was so perfectly made for him. So damn nice. He opened eyes he didn't realize he'd closed to look down at her, her face floating in a lake of dark brown, her eyes half-closed, as her lips licked.

"I don't want to hurt you..." he began but her legs wrapped around his waist, her heels digging in, her body with every muscle working sat herself up and sank down, impaling herself, her hands gripping his shoulders. Her lips curling into that smirk that he was growing fond of.

"As if." her hips rolled and he bit back a groan. "I'm going to have to destroy you now." Her mouth pressed to his neck and he felt the bite of her teeth in a pleasurable way, sucking hard, no doubt leaving behind a bruise but he'd wear it with pride. Her body flexed and rose, pulling up, driving down, riding him without pause or gentility.

She was a beast, just like Tary had said. Unlike the little blonde though, he wasn't at all scared. He took palmfuls of her ass and pulled her to meet him, grunting when he struck deep, needing to fill her all the way. So wet, she was dripping down and leaving his drenched balls to smack against her as he thrust up, she dropped, rising and humping like animals.

He felt it, the awareness that he was going to lose himself. He was a warrior, but she'd been teasing him and he wanted to cum so deep in her she'd taste it on the back of her tongue. His hand rose and tangled in her hair, pulling her head back, looking down at her face, the tension, the frustration of his bad day poured out into the hammering he was giving her willing, eager body.

"Take it.. all of it." He growled and she nodded, best she could. He fell forward, his other hand sliding down to hook the back of her knee and keep it at his hip as he pinned her down. His other hand planted by her shoulder as he drove into her willing body, sending her jostling up against his forearm, but he didn't allow her to scoot beyond the length of him, driving mercilessly until he couldn't think, couldn't see, only bellow in the glorious release of pleasure, pulling away only an instant before he exploded, pinning his spurting length between their bellies as he pressed into her, still grinding, still needfully wriggling against flesh made too sticky, too slick, too tender.

Slowly, the ecstasy began to ebb, to creep into tingles that danced over every nerve, his blood pounding in his toes, wet with sweat and smudged with the dust-mud they were both coated in. He collapsed to the side with a grunt and his arm sought to pull her up against him, wanting to feel close to her still. He'd fantasized, but the reality was even better. The air was chill against his nakedness, and he realized that she was pulling against his embrace, trying to escape.

"I'm just getting something. I'll be back, you big baby." Her smile flashed and he let her go, watching idly as she stood on knees that he was happy to see were still a little shaky. Job well done then. She fetched a pile of scrap cloths and the water bucket, washing the dust and sweat and stickiness from her body before handing him a stack for himself. "You can find your way home when you've caught your breath." Her dusty clothes shaken out and pulled back over her damp skin. "I had a nice evening. Maybe we can do it again some time." She flashed a wink and before he could object, she was out the door.

An hour later, back at the castle, he lay in his bed and stared at the ceiling. He eventually drifted off, a small smile playing at his lips.


	3. Chapter 3

Three months. It had been that long since he'd taken the walk in Whitestone that had ended in the arms of Trish, the Dish. He'd not given too much thought to it. Now and then, sure, when idle hours allowed it, but no more than once or twice a day. Three times tops. There was little time for anything fun though nowadays. They'd pretty much killed a god, but that didn't mean they could sit around on their asses for the rest of their lives. The first order of business, once things back in Whitestone were on an even keel, was to help the people of Vasselheim get all their shit fixed.

He'd been in town only two days, well, two nights and one day, and it was another distant event that had been gnawing at his mind like a dog with a meaty bone. He had to do it. He would go and turn himself in. He had, after all, beaten two guards of the city. He'd broken their jaws and poured ale on them and for what? Shits and giggles? He couldn't start this new chapter of his life with that hanging over his head. He'd ... he'd just have to hope they would let him help rebuild the city, like that Duke guy in Whitestone had. Serving his sentence but still being useful.

Thinking of the other goliath, naturally, it linked his thought process to the one who'd beaten him at arm wrestling that Winter's Crest Festival day. No. Couldn't think about her. Had to go make things right. He kept his head down, his shoulders slumped, his course set. Less than two hours later, he was being freed. Praised as one of the saviors of the city, he was grateful for the freedom, of course, but wasn't quite sure what to do with it now.

He was not a smart man, he knew that. That didn't mean he liked it. He had learned his letters and could read little bitty words but he wanted more. He'd lived a long time illiterate, and not knowing any was almost kinda better than knowing some, because now instead of just a page of nothing but squiggles, he could make out half of what it said. Half was not good enough! He was not a fan of weakness in himself, and not being able to read whatever he wanted whenever he wanted... that was a big weakness.

"Could you point me in the direction of a.. a lie-berry?" He'd asked, and they were showing him. He wasn't sure what he'd do when he got there, but fate put the answer directly in his way as the persnickity little shopkeep seemed to appear before him as he stepped out of the station.

"I was being summoned. They found the..." his flushed face shifting from the anticipation of having retribution to confusion as he pointed from Grog to the guards. "Why's he walking free?"

Like lightning it hit him. He could pay back this man at least. Sure he could give him some gold and that would mollify him, but he had the start of another thought that wasn't quite clear yet, except that he knew it was a very good idea.

"Yes..." Grog grinned to himself as the idea took root, spreading fast. This man needed to feel like a man again. Needed to win. Grog understood that feeling. To beat him physically, that was just...not going to happen. There were, however, other ways to prove you were better. "You will come with me." The more he thought on it, the bigger the idea got until it filled his head and made a little warm thing appear in his chest where that sinking regret had taken up residence, driving it out.

The man blinked and gawped and pointed with his nose lifted a bit. "Gentlemen... Gentlemen, this is the man who punched me. This is the man who ruined my business..."

'Oh yeah', Grog thought. 'This is going to work'.

"Gentlemen, whose word are you going to believe. The savior of Vasselheim.." He gave what he thought was a very heroic sort of pose, shoulders back and chin up, hands on his hips before he dropped his eyes to the merchant. "Or his _tutor_." His last word filled with the whole of his big idea just in the way he said it.

The man opened his mouth, then looked more confused than ever. "What?"

The guards backed away, and Grog laid out the plan. He'd pay the merchant to be his tutor. Teach him to read. The sack of gold was more than the man could lift, but he drug it along, either too proud to ask for help or too worried Grog would not give it back. They arrived at his shop, where he made Grog wait outside while he put the coin away. He returned a few minutes later, looking a little uneasy.

"Well then. I suppose the best place to begin is to discern what it is you know already."

The man took him to the library of the Cobalt Reserve where, for a few more coins, a couple of books were purchased. "You will come to meet me at my shop every Miresen, Whelsen and Folsen at mid-day. I will give you your lessons then. Now... you can go." He seemed still uncertain, but Grog had hope. Today was Da'leysen, which meant he'd be starting tomorrow.

As he planned it, the man, whose name he recalled was Cydric, took a great deal of pleasure in lording his higher intelligence over Grog. It was, at first, a bit snippy, but as the weeks passed, their interactions became less about proving that he, Cydric, was better, but in actually working to help Grog become a better reader.

It was another month before Grog brought up a subject that had been weighing on his mind.

"Mister Cydric..." He put the large slate piece away that he'd been working on his spelling upon. "I was wondering if you could help me write a letter? I mean, I would write it, but you look over it after and make sure I didn't make any mistakes?"

"Oh, well... I suppose that could be done." he nodded, a slightly airy lilt to his words as he turned around his own larger slate on which he wrote the lessons, the price list for his potions written on the other side.

"Thank you, Sir." he gave a very polite bow of his head. He had learned that sometimes you needed to use honey to catch flies, and the only way to get what he wanted was to ensure that Cydric felt he was contrite and truly sorry for what he'd done.

All night and part of the next day he'd been writing. Well, drinking and writing, but the following lesson day, he had the note done. There were four spelling errors which became his homework for the next day, and on Folson, he wrote it out again, this time without a single wrong word. Now, he had but to post it to Whitestone.

Now, he had but to post it to Whitestone

~@~ ~@~ ~@~ ~@~

"There's a boy here for you." A soldier, dark-skinned with a single heavy braid down the middle of her scalp motioned behind her as she passed Trisha in the yard.

Wondering over the reason there'd be anyone for her, she made her way to the front of the barracks and there, sure enough, was a rather weedy looking youth of perhaps his middle teens. He was clad in a dark blue tunic over which a red sash was laid. His brown hair stuck to his brow as he shifted from foot to foot nervously.

"Yes?" She stepped up, her hands settling on her hips.

"Hello, Madam." His voice was pitchy and cracked a bit as he spoke. It was out of proper cadence as if this were some practiced speech he was told to give each customer. "I am Dillot, a courier of the newly invested Western Tal'Dorei Letters Service. A hasty post... posthaste." he then held out a folded letter, sealed with a big glob of red wax.

"Thanks." A dubious glance and when she took the letter, his hand remained out. Her chin dropped and so did the hand, the lad backing up and then walking hastily away. She'd heard of messenger services popping up here and there, running letters to Westruun and beyond for those who could not just wave their little fingers and speak over a great distance.

The letter, once unfolded, was in a very large blocky hand.

**DEAR TRISH**

**I HOPE YOU ARE GOOD. WE HAD LOTS OF FUN. I LIKED IT. YOU ARE VERY HOT. I HAD A DREAM AND YOU WERE IN IT. - GROG**

**PS - WRITE BACK.**

She smirked and re-read it a half dozen times before folding it back up. She spent the evening hours in her room alone, pen in hand, composing a reply that she hoped would satisfy.

She spent the evening hours in her room alone, pen in hand, composing a reply that she hoped would satisfy

~@~ ~@~ ~@~ ~@~

It had been four and a half months since he'd begun his tutoring. Cydric had shown him that lots of big words were just little bitty ones stuck together. It was just a matter of breaking them down. He'd taught him 'ing' early on, for instance. It got stuck to lots of short words and so they became less trouble when he saw it now. Still, lots of them weren't so easy to handle. He had been excited when he got the letter back from Trish, but he could only read a few of the words, so he brought it with him to the next lesson.

"Mister Cydric..." he began as he settled down onto the cushion on the floor of the shop, now closed for 'lunch' as it did every time that he had his lessons. "I got this letter, and I was wondering if you would read it out to me."

"I suppose. You copy the words on the board and say the letters, to yourself..." a look of warning as he'd nearly gone mad after an hour of hearing the words spelled out aloud last time. ".... and I will do so." He took the letter and dampened his lips, drawing in a breath.

_"Dear Grog. I was quite surprised to get your letter. Not often do I get such notes. So, you dreamt of me? Was it good? Did I ..."_ he had scanned just a bit ahead as he read and now he pulled up short, eyes skimming the words and growing pinker by the moment. "Oh.... OH! Oh sweet Bahamut..." he folded it very quickly and, quite flustered, pushed it out toward Grog to take. "You.. you should have someone else help you with this."

Grog grinned, judging by the attitude that the letter was going to be pretty nice. He thought he might ask one of the ladies who kept his nights less lonely. They'd probably have no problem with a letter like that. He found it hard to concentrate on his lesson, and as soon as he'd finished he hurried off to find an available lady friend to read to him. That was the first time he'd ever had that particular service.

They were, as ever, happy to see him and he was escorted up to the simple but tidy room. The dark-eyed girl called Apheilia, naked and warm in his embrace, nibbled at his ear as he dug the letter out of his pouch and held it out. Her smirk was playful as she settled in, cuddling to his side as she opened the letter.

_"Dear Grog, I was quite surprised to get your letter. Not often do I get such notes. So you dreamt of me?"_ Aphelia made a little squeak. "Shame on you, dreaming of other girls." a wink flashed and it was proof she had no real jealousy. _"Was it good. Did I scream your name and beg you to bang me through the floorboards? Did I wrap my mouth around your very memorable member and attempt to suck you so hard your backbone gets a permanent bend in it? Did you fold me over and stick it so deep I felt it in the base of my skull, or am I getting your dream and mine mixed up?"_ Aphelia giggled again. "Ooh. I like her."

Grog had been hard before, but now, he was pretty sure he could cut diamonds in half. 

The rest of the letter was more general. Talking about Whitestone and the lack of anything really interesting to divert her mind from other things before it ended. _"So, in short, weather's shit, boring as hell, nothing has changed. Signed, Your friend, Trish. P.S. If you wish to write back, do. Better yet just send filthy drawings of what you dreamt, It'll keep me company until I can get my hands on you again."_

With a low growl he snatched the letter away and set it aside, turning to drag Aphelia into the bed. She was talented and exuberant and beautiful in every way and yet as his thrusts became deep and fast, rushing toward the highest point of his pleasure it was a much more handsome face, scarred and sarcastic that flashed behind eyes squeezed shut as he poured out his heat into the moaning woman beneath him.


	4. Chapter 4

With a bellow, his fist rose from beneath the challenger's chin, striking hard and sending blood and saliva spewing upward like a fountain, the burly human's feet leaving the ground as he rose up and back, landing in the sands with a dusty cloud and a heavy 'whuff' of his breath driven out of his lungs. 

The blood-spattered and bruised champion threw back his head and roared, the crowd shouting and cheering, the raging eyes pinpoint focused as they fell quickly on his opponent who was not moving save the weezing for breath. Sweat ran over his skin, making the dust cling there and go striped to create an alternate pattern to his ashen flesh and dark tattoos. 

He had been in the ring for almost an hour, and this third challenger was good, but hardly enough to do anything to dispell the tension he had slowly acquired over the passing months. The work here was nowhere near done. He was learning more every lesson, and the ladies all knew his name and were very kind, the ale flowed free and he ought to have been happy as a lark, whatever that meant. 

He had begun a very nice letter campaign with Trisha. He would dictate what he wanted to say and one of the ladies would write it down for him, then he'd copy it and send it on. Every letter back she would tell him she missed him. That he was in her dreams and the more he thought about what she was dreaming, the more his own dreams were occupied by building on her ideas. He needed to go back. Just for a little. Soon as he had defended his title, he'd do that. No other challengers seemed willing, and so he was, as usual, champion of the Crucible. The next day, he arranged to return to Whitestone. 

He was feeling a weird fluttery sensation as he stepped into Whitestone again. He had faced dragons and gods and he'd felt fear plenty of times, but this was too small to be fear really. It wasn't as if he didn't think she wanted to see him. She made it pretty clear she wanted more than to see him, but he went to the usual places, and she was nowhere to be found. Nobody seemed to know where she'd gone. He headed to the castle, hoping he could at least see Percy and Vex.  
The guards gave him no problems as he made his way in, walking the halls, trying to mark down interesting things for the next time he had to act as the official tour guide. As he stopped to study a new painting of the Lord and Lady of the castle, he was brought up short by a familiar voice in the hallway. 

"So, you see, we've much in the way of planning accomplished, but not so much in the realm of the doing." Percy's elegant words lifted. "I do not want to expand the Riflemen beyond Whitestone, but whenever there is a great trouble, little troubles tend to follow it. Vasselheim has a great deal of work needing done there, and I worry for the rebuilding of not just the homes and businesses, but the morale of the people. I am reticent to imply that The Bastion is in any way subpar, but both an influx of new blood and new ideas would, perhaps, not go awry."

"I understand your predicament, My Lord." It was Trish! "You want to offer help, but not imply they need it. I have a few men who wouldn't mind a change in scenery for one reason or another. Some who might benefit from a ..." she seemed to be considering how to phrase something. "... a town with a less elegant atmosphere." 

"I don't believe I understand." It was Percy's turn to sound confused. Their voices were drifting nearer. 

"Well, if I may speak plainly, My Lord, it is known that there are certain people who, seeing others who have more than they do, are inclined to become sour over it and let it rule them rather than accept things as they are." 

"Ah. I understand perfectly. Well, yes, for those type, Vasselheim is perhaps better than Whitestone." They came around the corner, Percy's arms tucked behind his back as he strolled at Trish's side. "But don't let anyone know I ever said so." The pale, bespectacled gent paused and turned to face her. "I look forward to your report on what men we can spare." He gave a nod. "I, as needs must, have many more items on my lis..." he gave a sort of uneasy half smile as he prevented himself from saying that particular word. "My _agenda_ to check off before I am free for the day. Thank you again for your help, Trisha." He pivoted on his heel and strolled back as he'd come. 

Grog, finding no place to hide , just adopted what he hoped was a casual posture, his hand on the wall, his other on his hip, one foot crossed over the other, looking off into the middle distance as if pondering something important.  
He watched her in his peripheral walk by, nodding politely, as if he were a stranger, showing no sign of anything friendly at all. He felt his mood deflate but the moment she had passed him, he felt a hard CRACK against his butt cheek, whipping his head around to catch her rubbing the red away from where she'd backhanded him across the rump, a teasing grin on her lips. 

He turned to follow her, chat her up a bit, but he got his foot caught in the edge of the rug and twisted as he turned, wrenching his back a bit. He winced and pressed his hand to his back, trying not to show the pain. Funny that he could fight for hours with enemies, sustain brutal damage and only roar for more, but if he got a cold or stubbed his toe or pulled a muscle in his back out of nowhere, it hurt SO much worse! 

"What have you done to yourself." She admonished softly, eyeing him as she stepped back. "Where's your room, you've got to lie down." 

He was too pained to argue and just pointed, following along with that terrible twinge radiating needles and pins all down his leg. In his room, she passed him and stripped the blanket off his bed, spreading it onto the floor. "Down." She pointed and dropped a pillow at one end. "On your stomach." 

Confused, he looked at her for a long minute, then knelt down, laying out on his stomach, his arms folded around the pillow, his cheek resting on it as he waited. He watched her pull her armor off and toss it onto the bed, boots as well removed and she dug in a pouch for a moment, coming out with a stoppered jar of something. 

"What's that?" He pouted. 

"It's horse linament." She knelt down beside him, her fingers dipped in the jar, the golden translucence like some kind of jelly sticking to them, the air filled with a medicinal smell that was pungent, but not really unpleasant. "Lie still."

Her hands moved over his lower back, spreading out and clenching down and in, moving in slow circles. He'd had massages before. He'd paid for them at the house of Lady Favors lots of times. Had all kinds of pretty-smelling oils rubbed into his tattooed hide with touches as soft as flowers. Also, he'd had Trinket massage him sometimes. The big fuzzy paws pushing until bones popped and things went back into place. No grace, but firmness that the ladies lacked. This was something between the two. Trisha's hands were hard and strong, digging into the muscles as she leaned into the rubbing, but also more tender than the massive front feet and razor-sharp claws of Vex's bear. 

"Nice tattoo. You guys must really like bears. This the same one I see outside the Bakery all the time?"

"Hmm?" He shook his head. "No." His back began to feel warmer where that stuff was rubbed in. It was undoing the knots by melting them it felt like. "That's there because I killed my uncle and cut his tattoo off and put it on my back." He felt her pause and pull her hands away. 

"Oh, no, it's a copy." He began to tell her the story of his life, at least the part about his exile, his uncle Kevdak, how he'd fought him and how he'd had the tattoo copied onto his own skin. "But on my back, because all the trouble I had with him, it's behind me now." He nodded once and settled his chin back against his folded arms as the firm, warm strokes of her calloused hands moved slowly up across his back. The way her hands felt was nice, not at all seductive or teasing, but like they'd felt when he'd arm-wrestled her. Firm and warm and determined.

"So..." he spoke, his voice a rumble against the pillow's edge. "What about you?"

"What about me?" She chuckled, shifting her posture so she was astride his lower back and her angle could give her better leverage to really dig her hands' heels into his muscles. 

He groaned despite himself and a few backbones went 'pop'. "I told you something about me... tell me something about you. Were you born here?"

"No." She said as if that would count as her answer. When he looked back at her, brows lifted, she sighed and made a 'tsk' sound before continuing. "I was born in Port Damali. That's on the Menagerie Coast. Wildemount." She ran her thumbs in tandem up either side of his spine. 

"Oh, where Tary lives." 

"Well, in a manner of speaking." Deastock was a good ways away, located in the Dwendalian Empire. The Menagerie Coast was a separate country. "He lives inland. I grew up on the coast. Port Damali wasn't ... well, not a very nice place. Have you ever heard of The Myriad?"

He frowned. "Yeah, they're real pricks." 

"Indeed they are." She said softly. "They're vipers, all of them. Port Damali is one of their favored nests. As a girl there, you had two choices really when it came to sex. You could wait around for someone to just take it... or you could make some coin and sell it. Lots took the second way. My father wasn't a very strong man, a drunkard really, but he did one thing right. He never told anyone I was a girl. From the time my ma died, he dressed me as a boy, he kept my hair cut short, he called me Trent ... pretty soon everyone thought I was a boy. 

I was walking by this brothel called The Silver Spire and this really ... shithead type was beating up on one of the girls. She couldn't have been much older than I was, and I was just ten. I picked up a broken board and I ..." She grit her teeth and he could feel the malice in her. "Beat the shit out of him. Literally. He's lying in his soiled trousers, crying like a babe, and now that he's down, suddenly all the men who ought damn well to have been watching over the girl come pouring out. Well, the guy who ran the Spire he said he could use a scrapper like me. The other bouncers there, they taught me to fight and use a sword and dagger and ... by the time it became obvious I wasn't a boy, it was too late. Any man who tried to touch me when I didn't want it would immediately regret that decision. I let my hair grow, I stopped calling myself Trent, I hung out with the girls and they taught me that it didn't have to be that bad. Eventually, I got all the clients they couldn't handle. The big half-orcs and rough pirates and the little scrawny types who like being bossed around." 

Grog chuckled. He'd met a few guys like that in his life. "So, how'd you get here?"

"Well.." Her hands moved now over his shoulders at the sides of his neck. He had to admit that he was, now devoid of pain, more aware of the feel of her thighs at either side of his waist, her body rocking against him as her hands kneaded the thick muscles of his trapezoids. It made it hard to concentrate on her words. "Myriad didn't own the Spire. The owner wouldn't sell, so they burned it down. Most of us got out." She paused and he didn't press again. "I got on a merchant ship and made my way up to Whitestone over the next few months. Been here just over five years now." 

"Mmhmm." He felt all warm and cozy, all rubbed to a pudding. "Stay." 

"What?" She leaned over and he felt her breasts soft against his back, a little pang of lust throbbing in his loins. He lifted up, ignoring her squeals as her knees left the ground as he went on his palms and knees, her arms sliding around his neck as he finished standing. "Grog, you're going to hurt yourself again." Laughter in her words making him smile. 

Backing up to the bed, he flexed a bit. "So, let go." She dropped off his back onto the bed with a little bounce and he turned and dropped down atop her, his knee between her thighs, his hands moving over her breasts, kissing her neck.  
"I have work." She smiled but her tone was firm. "I have to go make a list for Lord DeRolo." 

"Fuck Percy." He growled against her shoulder and ran his massive palm up along her thigh and under her rump to drag her up and astride the heavy bulge of his waking arousal as he laid on his back, looking up at her. "You rubbed the back side, gotta do the front." 

"How about this." She wrapped her hands around his wrists and pulled his hands to fold atop his chest. "I go finish my shift. I write that list for Lord De Rollo, I come back when I am done, and I will happily rub whatever you like." She smirked down at him, the radiant heat of her loins faint but there. 

"For how long?"

"As long as it takes." She moved to dismount but he wrapped his hands around her waist to stop her. She looked down at him with a quirked eyebrow of receding patience. 

"I want all night." 

She narrowed her eyes. "Fine. But now, I have to go." She slid off and he didn't stop her this time. 

"You promise?" He couldn't keep the hint of disappointment from his voice. 

"Yes, I promise." She walked back over and gave his cheek a trio of soft slaps, not painful in the least. 

He reached up and snatched her hand, turning it to press a kiss to the back of it. It stank of liniment but he didn't mind. "Until then." He had watched Scanlan enough to attempt to be suave when he felt the mood strike. He noticed that her cheeks went a little pink and her eyes narrowed, the scar on her cheek wrinkling faintly as she smiled and pulled back her hand. She gave a nod and a wave and walked out, stretching her arms overhead and arching her back. He was tempted to go drag her back right then, but he understood that she was very proud of her position at the castle, and he didn't want to fuck with it, even if he wanted to fuck ... period. 

He wasn't the most patient man in the world, but he could keep busy. There was tour preparation, a visit to the Slayer's Cake, a stop by the house of lady favors to tell them he was back in town and to get all limber just in case. His back felt better than it had even before he'd wrenched it, and he hummed to himself contentedly as he walked the halls toward the exit. 

"Grog!" a voice managing to sound both cool and cheery at once echoed out of a room as he passed. He turned just in time to find his chest emblazoned with a dark-haired half-elf in a long flowing tunic and trousers. She pulled back, the bright eyes glinting with happiness. "How wonderful to see you, Darling. Why didn't you tell us you were coming to visit?" 

She stepped back and Grog had to admit that being a Lady was maybe spoiling Vex too much. "You're uh..." _ Never mention a lady's weight..._ he could hear scanlan's voice in his head. _ or it will go very badly._ "You're looking very well-fed." He nodded, his eyes still on the obvious pooch of her belly. 

"Grog.." She smirked. "I'm not fat, I'm pregnant." 

He narrowed his eyes and then they widened. There was a baby in there!? A little Percy-Vex baby?! He gaped open-mouthed and made a little squeak of happiness before he just dropped down to his knees and leaned down, nose-to-navel. "HELLO BABY!" He bellowed and Vex jumped back, then laughed softly. 

"Darling it can hear you if you talk normally. At least I think so. It seems to like Percy's voice. Calms it right down. Ooop!" she giggled, actually giggled like a girl and reached down to take his hand, placing his palm on the rounded front of her stomach. "Not yours though. Not calming at all." 

He was confused for a moment then, with a little weird wiggle, he felt something under her skin moving, stretching out against his hand and then a little thump. 

"Did your baby just hit me?" Grog asked, both impressed and a little offended. 

"Kicked, more than likely." She covered his large hand with both of her own. "A real fighter this one. Have to watch your back." Vex was obviously teasing him. 

"Wow." he pulled his hand away only because it was kind of weird to be feeling up a pregnant woman in the hallway. "That's amazing!" He stood and gave her a hug, though a very gentle one. He felt a slight note of nostalgia for the old days. Change was hard. He didn't like it. Things had changed when Scanlan left. When Vax died. When Vecna was defeated. It was like they'd been riding down a flood-full river on a log that was burning while being shot at by orcs. Compared to that, life was kinda boring now. Maybe it was the quiet things that mattered though. When the screams and the roars and the shouting was gone, the quiet things like babies and cake and back rubs were able to be appreciated more. He couldn't imagine it would ever be his flagon of ale, but... it suited Vex and Percy pretty well. He was happy for them. "I am going to go practice my tour speech, if that's okay." 

"You do whatever you like, Grog. I'm just happy to see you." She gave him a sly look. "And I know there's someone else in the castle who has missed having you to rub on." Her wicked wink deployed. 

Oh shit. She knew. He didn't know whether to admit it or to pretend he didn't know what she was talking about. Would she tease him? Probably. Oh, this was just terrib... any further thought was driven away by the large brown figure that tackled him and began to lick at his face with a low growling sort of breathy moan that smelled strongly of salmon. Trinket left his beard all sticky and fishy as he showered him with affection then plodded away to sit on his haunches and look up with his wide eyes of complete contentment. Who could be mad at that face?

"Trinket, you keep Grog company while Mummy goes and finds the bathroom." She walked quickly down the hallway. "Again." Vanishing into the castle's innards. 

Grog just chuckled and headed out to do his errands and maybe grab a bath before the evening was upon him. Again, that not-quite-scared-but-something-like-it feeling was invading his tummy. Maybe it was just a lack of ale. He'd have to fix that.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING!!!!
> 
> If non-consensual sexual content is something that you do not care for, THIS CHAPTER IS NOT FOR YOU! The acts portrayed herein are violent and horrific. PLEASE feel free to skip it and move to the next if this theme is a trigger to you. It will be referenced in future chapters, but if you skip it, you will still be able to follow the storyline. 
> 
> Thank you.

Almost a year since he’d passed through her life again. Over the months she’d seen him often. She’d traveled to Vasselheim with the recruits Lord de Rolo had her collect, and he was a beast in the Crucible but even more ferocious outside of the sands. She’d been back in Whitestone for a month now, and his arrival was only a touching of base before he was off again to the glorious wedding that Lord and Lady de Rolo had never had. Their freinds had been a bit tetchy about this fact and eventually they gave in and set about the planning of a get-away wedding at Dalen’s Closet, a resort in Marquet. The wedding was going to be something to see, but as Lady Cassandra had gone ahead by ship with Kynan as her personaly guard, which left Trisha to keep an eye on things at home. 

“Hey.” Grog grinned as he paused in the hall, his hat tucked under his arm, a truly hideous thing, but he was proud of it. “Sorry you can’t come.” 

“Don’t you worry about me, Poobah. I’m fine here.” She shrugged and crossed her arms. “You won’t be gone long enough to write, so that’s the only bad thing.” Her wink given teasingly as he hurried off to the garden where his friends were waiting to meet up and make the transition. 

Lady Vex’ahlia, Lord Percival, and their new baby Vesper had been enjoying the somewhat bittersweet first couple of months of parenthood. Despite the expectation, Lady Vex’ahlia was a very ‘hands-on’ mother. Vesper had a nanny, but she was not the main source of the baby’s care. She was a back-up to the Lady herself. Trisha had spent many a night in the halls of Whitestone Castle watching the Lady walk the baby, bouncing her lightly in her arms as she sang in soft lullaby words to soothe her back to sleep.

Once the group had moved to the Sun Tree, and the castle was empty, Trisha began the work of preparing. She rang the bells and called the servants up, as well as sending words to the guards. “When they return, we will …” She looked from face to face. 

“Have the place spotless and shining as Pelor’s own living room!” One of the maids spoke up with a smile. 

“Have the streets washed down and swept, every bit of refuse picked up between the Sun Tree at the castle.” The head of the gardening staff said with a firm nod. 

“Handle any problems that may come up and assure that nothing troublesome awaits them when they return.” Viagan Brughur, current Pale Lord of Wardship on the Whitestone Council, (and Trisha’s commander) spoke up with a brushing of his mustache with his index finger. 

“Hang the sign to welcome back the Lord and his Lady with congratulations and the best wishes of the people of Whitestone.” A woman spoke up, her grin evident. “Been passing it around place to place for a week. Hardly a spot on it isn’t covered with messages from the citizens.” 

“Good. Good.” Trisha gave a nod to the others who she’d been plotting this with. “They don’t plan to stay overlong. The rehearsal is tonight, the wedding tomorrow. No doubt they’ll take the day after to recover from the celebration, but they could arrive as early as Miresen morning, so, we need to be ready by then.” 

Every face seemed as determined as she was herself, and so, with a little clap, the group was dismissed to their own tasks. She did what she could make sure that the castle was being made ready, nodded as she walked the path to the Sun Tree, seeing the streets clear of broken branches or bits of bracken. They should come home to nothing but relaxation. All of them. They’d had a busy year and the next would still hold much in the way of rebuilding all across Exandria as well as here in Whitestone. 

The mood had been cheery. Festive. But something was niggling at the back of her thoughts. It was stupid, but since that night so many months ago, she had been disturbed by a facet of her interactions with Grog. Staying. It wasn’t her nature. It was _get done and get gone_ usually, but with him, she was suddenly ... well, another sort might have called the feeling shyness. Not that she was ashamed, but, she felt a little unsure how to walk out when her partner was so willing to snuggle afterward.

"Not a cuddler." She said to herself, shaking her head as she watched the streets from the corner. "Not my thing." Even saying it aloud to herself she heard that it was a lie. She had wanted to lie there in his arms and feel, for once, small and delicate and feminine. Three things she was most assuredly not. Though tempted, she’d not put herself in the position to spend the night again. 

She felt a shiver on her back, her experience and years of familiarity with the streets of Whitestone making the hairs at the back of her neck prickle, her hand falling to her sword at her hip only a moment before a large hand wrapped hard around her wrist and wrenched it behind her back, another arm sliding around her waist from behind.

She coiled to fight when the cold press of a blade against her throat pulled her onto her tiptoes and backward down the nearby alley. Her feet fought for purchase as the figure drug her toward one of the buildings still unclaimed in the continuing revitalization of Whitestone. Panic was not something she felt often, and so even now as a trickle of blood where the blade had broken skin warmed a line down her neck, she was calmly planning her next move, waiting for the right moment.

The building was dark, the windows whole, but blackened from a fire within. It took her a moment for her eyes to adjust and take in everything in a glance. It took only a blink's worth of time to realize things were far worse than she'd imagined.

Chunks of broken furnishings, overturned tables, and broken display cases lay haphazardly across the interior. It looked as many of the looted buildings did. Shattered and abandoned. There were things here that did not belong. At the corner of the shop, a pile of decimated furnishings, broken glass, and shattered planks sat piled in a deadly melange, a hundred sharp points sticking up and out in all directions. The rafters, soot-black but not alligator skinned, token of a fire that had been more smoke than flame, supported a pulley on which a large cage hung. Within it, a small girl, no more than ten perhaps, was holding tight to a much younger boy, perhaps four or five in the confines of a small wire cage swinging faintly near the ceiling. At the other end of the rope was the figure of Korat, a weedy little lickspittle who she knew peripherally from around town.

"Korat, you little piece of ..." A press of the blade at her neck cut the words off.

"So..." a rumbling voice like a rockslide ran over her from behind. "You know my associate then."

There was no mistaking the voice of the one who had dragged her into this place. Who even now had a blade to her throat. Vedmyer.

"Slip your leash did you?" She grit through her teeth, her eyes still on the pair in the cage, both too frightened to do more than stare back with wide eyes. She could, perhaps, defeat the former Duke and his little assistant, but not before Korat could drop the rope and send the children to fall onto the mass of sharp objects beneath them. Things had grown very complicated very quickly.

He didn't answer, the tension though ratcheted up in the tightness of his grip on her arm, the press of the blade turning a bit as if fearful he would slit her throat if he didn't restrain himself. "Move." he pressed her forward toward the mass of blades, her mind racing, simultaneously kicking herself for getting caught and working on possible scenarios to get free and save the children. "Make a sound louder than a whisper, and my associate lets the brats fall." His voice dripping with sadistic enjoyment of the position of power he seemed to have reclaimed.

He shoved her forward onto the ground, his heavy booted foot coming up swiftly to plant hard between her shoulders, pushing her down against the slanted wood of a broken display case. Her cheek pressed against the cracked wood, she could feel splinters pushing into several places as he ground his heel into her upper spine. "Bring them." He barked and she heard the footsteps approaching, catching the sight of Korat's boots and then the sound of heavy iron clanking. He forced her hands behind her back and secured them with the manacles that had been provided.

She bit back the torrent of curses, the warrior in her screaming for bloody retribution but she had to put the safety of the children before her own. She was not one for prayer, but she sent one up, hoping someone was listening. She prayed for strength and insight as the terror threatened to overwhelm her.

"The rope." Korat moved away, and though she couldn't see, the cage did not come down. Obviously, he'd handed the rope to Vedmyer. Perhaps if she could get a good solid kick in, she could break his knee and roll enough to catch the rope when he dropped it but.. the variables were too unknown and time was too short. Footsteps rushed back, and a hand dug into the back of her hair, pulling her head back until she was sure her neck would break, the sticky warmth of blood from the dozens of scratches to her cheek turning cold quickly. Now she got a look at him, looming over her, his eyes burning with hatred, his teeth clenched.

"I played my part well, did I not? They'd have slain me soon as look at me and I needed to be alive to get my vengeance. So, I waited. I was patient and I planned, knowing the day would come when it would be worth all the indignity I have been forced to endure. Now they're dead, I'm free, and you..." he leaned down and wrapped a length of rope around her neck. "Are next on the list." The rope tightened and cut against the already nicked surface of her throat, choking her and breaking open the healing wounds there.

The pressure eased after a minute or so. She had to keep her chin up high, her neck stretched back or she'd strangle, but the rope he had used was obviously not the same he now was handing to Korat who sneered down at her. She'd pitched him out of The Tipsy Quorum more than once for being a bastard to the women when he was drunk, but to throw in his lot with Vedmyer? It seemed too much even for him. "So you're what? His faithful hound? Do you fetch? Roll over? Show him your belly?" Her voice quiet in the stillness, though the crack of his fist coming down into her jaw was anything but quiet. She felt teeth loosen and tasted blood, but she didn't cry out.

"Shut your damned mouth." Korat sneered. "We're equal partners."

She couldn't look around, but she had a feeling that if Korat would have glanced up, he'd have seen a look of dissent to that opinion on the bare-faced Goliath's features if that small sound of derision she'd managed to catch was to be trusted. Korat had missed it though, it seemed as he just glared down at her.

"Do you know..." Vedmyer spoke, moving around to where she could see him. His bare head and chest now exposed, the dark cloak drawn back to hang off of his shoulders. "They made me melt my sword down. Made me work the bellows until it was red hot and then watch as it went white, melting bit by bit. It was my father's sword. I dreamed of it even after it was gone. Of running it into the bodies of all those who thought they were better than me. Who enslaved me. That squat little prick with the magic hand who burned my home down, the whole of that group of interfering bastards, thinking they were so noble. So heroic. Murderers, all of them. They murdered your brother, did they not, Korat? "

"Aye." He sneered and spat against the ground. "Your best man, you said so yourself, right?"

"Indeed." the tone subtly woven with deception. "They burned him alive. Your family, destroyed by these ... interlopers into what was a very fine arrangement."

"We had plenty of money. Plenty of folks respected us. Then, it all fell to shit!" Korat was growing more agitated, and Vedmyer put his hand on his shoulder, calming him a bit.

"Then, at Winter's Crest, I saw them again. Thought I'd get my chance against the big one. It wasn't to be. You... you cheated and robbed me of my chance to prove myself. They drug me away in chains and for months they threw that loss in my face. That I had been bested by a woman. They had always held my father's sword as a promise. If I were cooperative. If I did what they commanded and I was a good little pet.." he spat the word. "They would allow me to look at it and hinted that I might even be freed someday to use it for the defense of Whitestone." He barked with laughter. "As if my first action wouldn't be to cut down as many of them as I could. It was after that rigged contest, angry that their money had been lost, they beat me and accused me of throwing the contest just to spite them. It was then they drug me to the furnace and made me watch as the only thing I had of my father, of my herd, was destroyed."

He snatched her jaw and ran his free hand over his crotch. "I've only got this weapon now, but I know just how to use it." He dug his fingers into her cheeks to press between the upper and lower teeth and force her mouth to open. When she balked, he cocked his head. "Shall I have him drop the rope?"

She glared hatefully but eased the fight in her jaw enough that a few inches of space lay between her lips.

"You cost me greatly with your cheating. Implying I deserved worse. What did I ever do to you to warrant the punishment they meted out? Nothing!" he bit the word sharply to end it. "So I think it is you who deserves this... and much more." He released himself from his trousers, hand stroking to firm up the flesh.

Were he human, it would have been impressive. Frightening even. The envy of every pissing contest but... like all things, it was the setting that made the stone, and the giant lineage that had so gifted Grog had turned its back on the former Duke, and she laughed. The sound like a crack of thunder in the quiet room. Snickering as she eyed what he had no right to be proud of.

The smack of his hand sent stars to burst in the darkened edges of her vision as her head snapped to the side painfully, her cheek burning, no doubt blood-red in the handprint that covered most of her face. He fumed and then a cold, deathly poisonous smile took his lips. He moved one hand down the rope and took hold of the slack end, his other hand moving down until a ten inch section was held taut between them. In a swift motion, he slid it into her mouth like a gag and let go with one hand.

Instinct made her bite down the instant before his other hand let go and the faint pull of the hempen braid tore against the side of her mouth. Her jaw, already throbbing, gave a surge of agony, her neck straining to hold up the cage and the children. "That will keep your mouth shut." 

He stripped off his cloak and reached into his belt to pull a wicked-looking curved dagger, stepping around to grab her manacled wrists and jerking her to her feet. "Here. Shove that this way." A rough screech of some heavy wooden object being shoved across the floor and she was pulled up on another fallen case. With sweeps of the blade, he cut her armor away, peeling it off without care, then cutting through her clothes enough to tear at them. A task which Korat joined in with, his groping paws squeezing at her breasts.

She screamed softly when something was pushed into her sex, a moment before she realized it was Vedmyer's fingers. "Oh,you're not enjoying this?" Vedmyer's taunting as he pushed deeper. "Korat here says you're a regular whore. That you'll spread 'em for anyone. So if you're smart, you'll get to juicing or this is going to be a very painful night."

He pistoned at her unwelcoming insides, the friction burning, his hands calloused from the labors he'd been, everyone thought, using as penance for his past misdeeds. She felt the response of her body done to spare her from pain and not out of pleasure, knowing it would only seem weakness to them.

"There she goes... look at that ..." the fingers pulled out, she could hear Korat chuckle and then felt the wet streaks of Vedmyer wiping his hand along her hip. "Laugh now, bitch." he shoved himself hard into her with a grunt and within seconds was pounding at her without mercy.

Tears bit at her eyes, but she wouldn't let them fall, forcing her mind to some other place. Some calm, distant realm where she could think about things without the awareness of her body's suffering. Barely aware of hands moving over her back and breasts as she was pinned in the half-bent posture, arms behind her back, pulled up onto her toes by the difference in height even with the box that wobbled under her with every savage strike of his hips.

Korat's hands left her, but only for a moment, appearing before her, his own length being roughly tugged. He wrapped the rope around his wrist and pulled it free of her teeth. "Open up, slut." He paused a few inches from her bruised lips. "If I feel a single tooth...I'll drop them."

"Drop them, and I will bite it clear off." She reassured him without emotion. He knew that the leverage was all they had to keep her in check, and even he wasn't stupid enough to lose it just yet. He pushed forward with a low groan past his bitten lip and across her tongue.

He tasted of sweat and dirt and probably hadn't washed in a week. She felt her stomach rebel and he took hold of her head with the free hand. "That's it, gag on it." Pushing deeper though he could not, were he twice the length, have reached deep enough to do it otherwise. "Ugh.. yeah, suck it... suck it harder... make me believe!" he pumped at her, fingers pulling at her hair as she tried to return to that place where she was unaware, but could not. She could hear the soft sound of crying from above, knowing that those children would be scarred for having to watch this. Look away. She sent the thought toward them. Don't let this hurt you as well.

His breathing quickened and Korat tugged her head back, pulling out as his shaft erupted and sent spurts of his issue all across her chin and the blood-caked side of her cheek. "Fuck! yeah... you wear it, you stuck-up whore. Shoulda been nicer to me, huh? Huh!?" He let her hair go to stroke and coax every drop until he had spent himself, and fell back, working to catch his breath as he shoved the rope back in-between her teeth.

Where Korat flagged, there was no such hope from his companion. His breathing was rough but even. "Oh, who knew you were so hot for my cock? Or is it any cock you'll get drippy for?"

"Maybe it's just goliaths." Korat chuckled softly "She's been seen with that other one. The one who cut off the Countess' head." He drank deep from a liquor bottle already half-emptied, tucking his spent prick back inside his filthy trousers.

"Is that so?" Vedmyer slowed, leaning down to pull her back by the rope around her neck, his rumbling voice in her ear. "You're fucking that son of a bitch Strongjaw?" His hips rocked slowly, almost gently as he leaned against her back, her manacled hands pressed against his belly. She wished she had a knife to slice it open with. "He ever fuck you... here?" Without a warning, he shifted his hips, pulling himself from her sex and driving without pause or mercy past the tight ring of her asshole in a single stab.

She screamed and almost lost the rope, every nerve on fire as he laughed uproariously. "I doubt it. Bet you don't let anyone back here, do you? Something special that hasn't been all worn out by your whoring?" He dropped her back down and began to sodomize her roughly. "Yes... so tight. You love it, don't you. Love my cock so deep." he grit through his teeth, pounding at her relentlessly. "Bleed for me, bitch. You wanted this. You cheated and you humiliated me.." his anger tightening his hands on her hips, the powerful strike of his hips bruising her backside. "You thought you'd won, but who's getting what they deserve now?" his breathing growing wilder and with a throaty growl she felt the heat spreading as he lost himself, the shameful awareness of his seed inside her made her want to vomit.

He pulled free with a groan. "That's just a taste. I've been preparing for a long time. " He let her fall and moved to pull her hair loose of the bun, wrapping the strands around himself and wiping his shaft clean before he faced her, his voice low. "There are potions to make a man go all night. I'm a big man, so I took three, just to be safe. It's a long time until dawn. " His fingers wrapped around the rope and pulled it out, stepping closer until he was level with her chin. "You know what to do."

Hours passed before he was spent. Korat roused and took his part at least half a dozen times in the span as well. Their cocks, their hands, whatever objects were in reach. Beaten when they could not find release in the usual ways, covered by blood and sweat and their mingled seed, burning into cuts and scrapes and bite marks so deep they would likely scar. She knew this was about power, not sex. She knew that erosion of power well, to be drug down, told you were nothing. She knew so many retreated to a place of darkness and numbness where they could think this was happening to someone else. She could not allow herself to go there. She had to keep herself here. Every touch, every taking, was marked forever in her brain. Tally marks to fuel her vengeance.

Somewhere in the distant surrounding farmlands, a rooster cried out. The room stank of ash and blood and vindictive lust. The bottle had been emptied, another started as Korat rose from the chair where he'd been resting, his fingers scratching at his cheek as he glanced toward the soot-covered windows. "Your Grace..." He addressed Vedmyer by his former title. "It'll be light in an hour or so. We should be out of here before then." He looked down at the curled-up mess on the floor. "Fun as she was, time to tie up the loose ends and go.." He took another swig of the rotgut whiskey and turned to go collect his things for the journey.

Vedmyer uncoiled from where he'd been kneeling, his voice a dark whisper in her ear. "You are absolutely right, Korat." He clapped his hand on the man's shoulder and took the bottle from his fingers, a deep swig taken before, with a single motion, he wound his hands around the other man's neck and wrung it like a chicken, snapping it instantly and dropping him to the ground. He reclaimed his discarded cloak and drew it back over to obscure his features and tell-tale grey skin, though it could not hide his shape or height.

The muted growl from the captive's lips drew him to look her way. She was glaring at him like a wet cat cornered in an alley. Stalking over, He snatched the rope from her mouth. "Did you have something to say?"

Her lips broken and swollen, the sides rubbed raw and bleeding from the damp hemp's friction, her eyes blackened, her face a mass of bruises as was her body. He saw her hatred, her unspoken revulsion, her pride rising, but she dropped her eyes a fraction and he saw her choose politeness, though bitterly clipped. "Let the kids go." She spat a gob of half-congealed blood onto the stone floor. "Kill me, fine, but let them go.”

He gave a cruel chuckle, taking the rope and tying it into the chain of the manacles on her arms. "So you don't get any ideas about moving. It's barely looped. You even try to move and it'll come lose long before your fingers can catch it."

She could hear the muffled sounds of the children’s desperate weeping in their suspended cage. 

He ran his hand over her hip. “I’m off to join my Lord Briarwood. He had a wedding to attend but he’ll be back very soon. He and I have all sorts of plans for Whitestone. Who knows, I may even come back and pay you another visit when you least expect it." Then he was gone.


	6. Chapter 6

Grog had returned with the rest of the group hours ago. The wedding had been nice, but really different than he’d imagined. He’d been so happy to be in charge of hurling flower petals, and seeing Vax again had been weird. It had all been weird, really. He felt off. He had gone to the Tipsy Quorum and hoped to see Trisha, but Shauna hadn’t seen her for a couple of days. He was just thinking about going for another walk, maybe to the house of lady favors when a man entered the Quorum and after a few seconds of scanning, pinned to Grog and walked over to his table. 

“I heard you made it back.” He sneered and slammed his palm down onto the table. “For you.” The man turned and walked quickly out, Grog rising to intercept but he noticed that there was a square of paper where the man’s hand had come down. He opened it and stared for a few minutes, then dropped a handful of coins onto the table without looking and all but ran out of the tavern. 

He ran, his heavy footfalls thudding as he barreled toward the castle. He reached the front gate, looking around. He wasn’t sure where everyone was. He set his teeth in a snarl and reached up, setting his fingertip against the lobe of his ear where the earring still hung. “Pike?” 

“Y-yes Grog?” Her slightly timid but warm voice wove into his ear. 

“I need you.” He was angry, he was upset, he was afraid, it was too much for his brain to hold and he needed help. 

“Oh, okay… where are you?” 

“I’m almost to the castle.” 

“I’ll meet you outside.” 

She wasn’t alone when he got there. When one talked into the earring, anyone who had one heard. The whole of Vox Machina, including Tary and Doty, who were going back home tomorrow, were standing in the courtyard as he passed the gate. 

He panted softly, token of running the whole way, and he unfolded the paper. “I was at the tavern, and this man comes and slams this onto the table.” He began to read. “_So you did not die. I have your … hoo-rah. Hoo-ree_?” He frowned, not knowing the word and putting the sounds together didn’t make a word he knew. He held it out to Pike who took it with a look of nervousness around the group. 

“Uh….okay, okay, okay..." She began to read aloud. _I have your … whore…_” She bit her lip and glanced up at Grog for a moment before returning to the page. “_She was a pleasant diversion. How was the wedding? I am glad my Lord Briarwood let you live. I will be far happier knowing that whenever she looks at you, it is me she will see. Even if you save her, she is lost to you forever. This is your fault. Yours and your friends. She got what she deserved._” 

Grog was confused and filled with a directionless rage. He knew lots of whores. He never understood why people said ‘whore’ like it was a bad thing and ‘tailor’ or ‘fisherman’ weren’t. They were all jobs after all. People doing things for money. Who had written the note? How did they know about Briarwood? 

His questions seemed to sprout wings and fly invisibly into the throats of his friends as they began to ask the same questions that were swimming around his head. 

“Who are they talking about?” Scanlan looked up at him, his little face serious and somehow older-seeming. 

“I dunno. I know lots of whores.” Grog shrugged faintly.

Keyleth was a little bashful as she stepped up a bit, her cheek pinking as she swallowed. “Um… are any of them… special? I mean, do you visit one more than any other .. lady?”

Grog shook his head faintly. “No. Whoever’s not busy when I come by.” His brow knit as he thought on it. He didn’t like the idea of any of them being talked about like they might have been hurt. “There’s only one person who I visit in Whitestone more than any other lady but she’s not a whore, she’s a guard.” He admitted with a half shrug before he realized he’d let the proverbial cat out of the bag. 

Pike gasped softly and wrapped her hand around her symbol of Sarenrae. The others likewise looked between one another like they were talking without words. “Keyleth? Can you scry?”

She nodded and began the casting. She shook and her face went pale. “I… there is a lot of broken furniture. Uh… like big cases for displaying things. There was … a fire, I can see the blackened wood. It’s dark. I can hear … there’s more than one voice. Children weeping. She’s… she’s telling them to be very quiet and very still. They’re… they are afraid the big man will come back.” She pulled herself back and away. “I don’t know where she is. I’ve never seen it before.”

“Realistically, it would be one of the buildings we’ve yet to begin repairs on.” Percy stated with his usual placid calm. “They are scattered throughout the city. I think we should split up. We'll cover more ground that way.” 

The hunt began. Each member of Vox Machina accompanied a pair of Pale Guard, spreading throughout the city. Every second that passed was worse. Grog kept seeing the faces of the dead. It was true that he’d seen people brought back, but sometimes they came back ...different. He didn’t want Trisha to be different. No, not just that. He didn’t want her to be dead. 

Then came the quiet, shaky sound of Keyleth’s voice over the earring. “We found them.” 

Grog arrived just after Pike, barreling into the building without thought, his eyes reddened with rage that was far easier to understand than any other feeling. Rage was good. Rage got shit done. He looked around quickly, hoping for an enemy to attack. The place was quiet and nearly empty except for the cage that hung up over a bunch of sharp stuff. The kids took one look at him and began to scream. 

“Grog!” Pike was there, pulling at his arm and making him look down. “You’re scaring the children. Wait outside until we get them down.” Her voice had that ‘do what I say because I don’t have time to explain right now but trust me I am right’ tone to it. 

“Okay.” He didn’t like it. “I’ll be right outside the door.” He stalked through the door just as Percy and Vex arrived. Pike said something quietly to them, and Percy stayed out in the alley with Grog, handling the dismissal of the Pale Guard, only a few staying behind. Tary and Scanlan seemed to arrive at the very same moment, and they too remained out in the alley.

Keyleth walked out with one of the children in her arms, his grubby arms wrapped tight around her neck, the other at her side, clutching at her hip as they skirted the crowd. “Darriq…” She looked up at the man who had been assigned to her. Too much had happened in the last few days for her to not know him well. “Could you?” 

“Of course, Tempest.” he had four children of his own. He knew kids. Gingerly, he knelt down and began to speak. It wasn’t magic, but the experience of dozens of years that drew the children to move toward him, to listen and nod. To answer when he asked who took care of them. To take his hands as he told them that he and the guards were going to take them home, and then they, as well as their mother and grandmother, would all go to the big castle on the hill and have iced cream and hot chocolate and cakes… his voice fading as he let the girl lead him home, carrying the boy against his hip. 

They had just gotten away from the alley when a hoarse, wild scream sounded. “NO!” and a clatter of wood made everyone turn and rush back into the building. 

“What’s going on in ...” The words locked on his tongue as he saw Pike and, in the radiant illumination of her spell, what she was kneeling beside.

Trisha was a patchwork of near mutilation. Her teeth were reddened, her eyes an island of pine in a sea of crimson, the whites nearly eclipsed by the blood in the swollen purple that framed them. "No. The others didn't get a cleric to heal them!" She drug herself to her feet, drooling blood down her naked chest. "He's running! We have to catch him..." Her arms still chained behind her, she pulled and rattled the manacles. "Someone unlock these damn things and give me a sword!"

Grog just stared, his fury mingled with so many other feelings he couldn't name them all. He felt sick and sad and ashamed. “Out,” he said quietly, feeling the others around him in the doorway. “GET OUT!” he barked and they moved out quickly. Guilt rose up in his throat like bile when he could better see how badly she'd been attacked. The letter had said this was his fault. He was to blame. Because of him, someone had hurt Trisha.

The ladies were moving toward her, making soft little sounds, so gentle. So kind. They were treating her like she was some kicked puppy needing to be tenderly petted and have her boo-boos kissed. Grog knew what she needed. He wanted what she wanted. He walked over and looked down at her eyes, his face contorted with fury. "Who are we killing?" reaching down to attempt to just break the chain of the manacles. They could worry about keys or picked locks later when she was dressed and armed and they were on their way. 

The chains gave and though the pain of dragging her arms from behind her must have felt as though her shoulder joints were filled with broken glass, she rolled them until either the pain was gone or she was too numbed to care. She spat a wad of congealed blood on the floor. Her lip curled as she looked up at him. "Vedmyer."

“Wait… “ Vex’ahlia’s voice rose from near the door. “Why do I know that name? Vedmyer.”

Grog flinched faintly as the question was somewhat echoey, proof she’d said it aloud into the earring while in the same room as him. Scanlan’s voice came after. 

“Didn’t I like… burn his house down?” Scanlan's voice drifted in a mix of concern mixed with just a touch of laughter.

“Yes, you did.” Percy’s calm and proper voice rising almost instantly. “He is supposedly a prisoner of the city working off his debt incurred under his service to the ….” The realization shifting Percy’s tone. “The Briarwoods.” 

Grog growled under his breath and was hurt that Trisha took a half-step back, her body moving into a posture of defense. _ ...whenever she looks at you, it is me she will see._ He took a full step back on his own. What had been obvious by that shift of tone was now being laid out in his ear. If Vedmyer had been with the Briarwoods before, perhaps Silas had come to him again. Vedmyer was going to be pretty pissed when he found out his boss was dead. Again. 

Pike was giving Trisha that look. The sympathetic sort of desperate look, her hand rising, then dropping to her side.

“Well, heal her.” Grog was confused. Why hadn’t she already?

“She doesn’t want me to, Grog.” Pike said with her almost maternal sort of tone. “I won’t do it unless she asks me to.”

He took hold of Trisha's arms, felt her flinch but kept his grip, making her look at him. "Let her heal you..." She opened her mouth to argue but he shook his head. "...bup-bup-bup... no. No argument. You want to kill him, well you have to be the best you can be. Right now, you look like shit and I bet you feel even worse. So, let her fix you so we can go tear his head off."

She wanted to fight him on it, simply because she knew what Vedmyer was. When he'd first come to Whitestone, a 'new noble', there were tales of women being drug off the street and never seen again. The few men who dared speak of what they had seen inside his house were soon enough found dead in the street, and after that, anyone who worked within that house was either too afraid to admit aloud what they'd seen, or they were of Vedmyer's ilk and took pleasure in it. Those women had not had anyone to help them. She felt guilty for not only surviving but for the chance to have the pain taken away, the wounds made whole. Still, he was right. She looked to the gnome and nodded once.

Healing spells were always something she imagined was a warm glowing feeling and the end of pain. It was not. Every wound was, in an instant, forced to knit. She winced as torn places she had not even known were there were simultaneously made whole. Her jaw felt as though it were being crushed as the jawbone's cracks sealed and teeth made loose in their sockets rooted again. Flesh filled with blood beneath the skin was drained as bruises retreated, both those visible and those too deep to view. It was a crucible of agony that lasted only a few seconds and then, no pain at all. Only the memory of it. Wounds that the cleric's spell could not diminish. 

Grog was so close, and she wanted to sob and feel his arms around her, protecting her, keeping her safe for just a few moments. That was quickly pushed away and she sniffed through nostrils she could now feel air through. "Could you maybe go find me some clothes?" She said with difficulty, not because of pain but because asking for help made that 'weakling' feeling she hated so much rise up higher in her mind. "And something I can cut his balls off with?"

"Clothes." he nodded and let her go. "And a very dull knife." His voice a growl, the implication that, being dull, it would take a long time and really hurt. He shared a look with Pike before he stormed off, slamming the door behind him so hard that some of the old charred wood above went to powder and rained ash and soot down over them.

"I know it will be hard." Pike began. "But can you tell me what happened?"

“I was stupid. He caught me off-guard. Drug me in here. He had a…” She looked around and gave a gesture toward the figure of the dead Korat. “... accomplice. He was the same son-of-a-bitch he always was. I wasn’t the first he did this to, but I’m sure as hell going to be the last.“ 

Pike blanched. “He’s done this before?”

“Yeah.” She wiped at the dried blood that was flaking on her bare skin, the clink of the broken manacles still weighing her hands down. She couldn't think about the others. Of Talia. 

“I’ll fix that, Darling.” Lady Vex’ahlia had, sometime between the revelation of Vedmyer’s involvement and now, stepped outside and was now coming in with a stack of clothing. “Grog’s idea of ‘clothes’ was a warhammer, a sword, two daggers, a breastplate and a robe of infinite twine.” A small shake of her head. “I thought you’d rather have a uniform.” The smile that the woman offered her was surprising. Trisha saw no pity, only apology and a sense of recognition. She understood without having to hear it said that the Lady herself had familiarity with being the subject of such an assault. The lady of the castle set the clothes down and wagged a packet that, when opened, produced lockpicks which she quickly deployed to remove the heavy bracelets from her wrists. 

Once freed, Trisha dressed hurriedly. Each layer made her feel, fractionally, more like herself. She even noticed that a comb and hair tie was included in the stack. It took all she had to keep from crying at the sight of them. The pain of pulling through her tangled locks was cathartic, and her scalp was throbbing as she pulled it back tightly and braided the remnant to twist around and be pulled through, tying it into a knot at her nape. 

“He’s crazy. Said he was going to join Lord Briarwood.” She huffed softly, knowing that the man was long dead, then paused. “He… he said that Lord Briarwood was going to a wedding.” She looked between the faces of the half-elf and the gnome, seeing the truth in their faces. “Oh no…” Her heart was near to bursting in panic. She couldn’t go through that again. 

“He’s dead. Very… very dead.” Vex’ahlia said with a curt bite of the words. “There is nothing that can bring him back this time. Wherever he’s gone, he’s never coming back.

A moment later, four figures moved through the door. Lord Percival, to whom Trisha bowed her head in respectful greeting, a small sober-looking gnome, the pretty boy blonde, and Grog, who as hinted, was carrying an armload of weapons. 

She left the hammer and the robe, but the daggers she slid into her belt and the sword fit well into her palm. “I thank you all for your concern.” Trisha was speaking, but she felt and sounded distant to herself. “I will take it from here.” 

There was a slight hubub as everyone began, simultaneously, to attempt to dissuade her. One voice cut through them all, though it was not the loudest or the most insistent. Lord Percival was used to having people listen when he spoke, and though he raised his voice fractionally, it did not take shouting to make the others stop. “Thank you.” He fixed his keen blue eyes on her through the lenses of his spectacles. “While we were waiting outside, I believe we have the beginnings of a plan. It is not about killing him, though, admittedly the first twenty or so plans were mostly devising very cruel ways to make him beg for death before we granted it…” He gave a pointed look toward Grog who just tensed up, every muscle flexing as if he were rehashing those former ideas. “But it is not for us to do. I believe this is something you must handle.” 

“Just what I said. Thank you all for …” 

“I wasn’t finished.” he lifted a hand to stop her. “While this is your … _quest_, if you will, that does not mean you cannot, nor should not, accept help when it is offered.” 

One person had not been present. She heard a fluttering sound and a large rook flapped through the door and within a moment, black became deep greens and soft autumnal coloration, feathers became clothing and lithe limbs, and the antlered figure of the woman who had left when Grog shouted for everyone to get out now stood, her mouth streaked with crimson. She looked ill, the specks of freckles stood out starkly against almost alabaster skin. 

“Bag. Of. Colding!” She drug her hand across her lips and with the other, dropped a tiny flopping bit of something into the bag Lady Vex’ahlia held open. “I shifted. Flew out and saw a rider making for the Parchwood. I got ahead of him and I swooped down and took his earlobe.” She spat delicately. “I can scry when I’ve rested.” She turned and looked at Percy. “He shot at me.” 

Trisha joined in the collective sounds of shock. 

“So, obviously we have more than a singular problem at the moment. I will remain in Whitestone, and attempt to trace his movements before tonight. To find where he got a firearm, and how. Vex, will you help me, Dear?” His tone barely civil, the anger beneath quite evident. 

“Of course, Darling.” She stepped over and slid her hand across his upper arm, a look shared that Trisha did not understand, but could tell held a lot of history and unspoken things. 

“Pike, the guards will be bringing the children to the castle. Do you imagine you could speak with them? See if you can find out anything useful? And, of course, see what you can do to mend things?” 

“Um… Derriq is with them now." Keyleth spoke up. "He’s got kids and I think he’ll be helpful and if I go, so will he. I think Pike and Scanlan should go with Grog and when things are clearer here, I can scry, find a tree and bamf us to where they are.” 

“Works for me.” Percy nodded. “Well, that may stand as the first plan we have ever made that did not take an hour.” Percy gave a curt nod. “Good hunting.” He nodded toward Trisha before he took his wife’s hand and stepped back, the pair swiftly moving together, conversing in low voices.

“To the Parchwood then.” Trisha did not wait for the others, needing to be moving. Needing to get out of there. To find him and make him pay. She got only to the end of the alley before Grog caught up, his hand set on her shoulder and she whirled around. “Don’t touch me!” She panted softly at the surge of panic it had sent into her. 

He blinked, obviously hurt. “I’m sorry. We won’t catch him on foot. We need to go get some horses, and some supplies first. I promise, he won’t get away.” 

She felt the stab of distrust. Of a life lived watching her own back and trusting no one. The part of her that said all men lied. “I believe you.” 

Surprisingly, this time, she actually did.


	7. Chapter 7

Though she had considered it time wasted, the gathering of the horses, of supplies, the pace they could now make was worth it. Speeding onward, blurring buildings into fields, then into the shadows of the thick trees of the Parchwood Forest.

She was forced by the nature of their mounts, to go far slower than she craved. The two gnomes shared a small bay, the blonde cleric rattling faintly with every thud of hoofbeats, the fancy bard behind her sneaking surreptitious sniffs of the pale hair and holding tight to her waist. The platter-sized feet of the plowhorse who had been conscripted to carry Grog sent showers of dirt up with every strike, its furry hooves shaking the ground as it bore its rider just to her left. The dichotomy of the small to the immense might have been amusing to her on any day other than today. Today, she only could think of the thousand ways she was going to make Vedmyer suffer.

The road lead on, but from it, several paths diverged. Any of them could have been his route of escape. Had he turned to the East or to the West? Was he fleeing inland? Toward the coast? She pulled the reins back and slowed herself and the others fell into line, each a little breathless. 

"It's hopeless." She spat it between her teeth. "He's gone." 

"Not gone. He's just not... here." The sweet-voiced gnome lady spoke. "We will find him though." Her smile was kind, but unwanted at the moment. 

Trish didn't want to hear that sooner or later he'd be brought to justice. She wanted to have him here. Now! Her mind and body were both fixed on the fantasy of driving a dagger into him again and again and again. She pulled up sharp and dismounted in a single motion. "Let me know when the druid gets here then." A toss of the reins around a low-hanging branch and she stalked off into the woods. 

Grog slid down far more slowly, watching the spot where she'd vanished into the trees. He felt too much. Fury, oh, that was there in great heaped up barrels. But so was sickness. His belly hurt. He had thoughts. They were fleeting like little fish in a clear stream that caught a bit of light and were gone before you could even tell what color they'd been. He wanted to catch them. Study them. Look at them until he could name them, but they were too quick. Too slippery. He found himself staring down at his hands as the fingers opened and closed.

"She'll be okay, Grog." Pike's tender voice came as she rode closer. Scanlan was off to the side of the road and she was alone on the back of the horse. He still had to look down to see her, but she was far closer than she'd have been on the ground. 

He frowned. One of those 'fish thoughts' moving in his memory. "Shoulda cut his fucking head off when I had the chance." In a flash he saw that day. Winter's Crest in Whitestone. Two prisoners, but only one head rolled. If he'd killed Vedmyer then. Again, he heard those words. 'your fault... your fault...' echoing with venom in his mind, cluttering his thinking further until only the red-hot fire of rage could burn through it. 

"Maybe." Pike nodded softly and it was quiet for so long he had to drag his eyes back over to make sure she hadn't vanished. She was still there, looking up at him with big eyes full of ... well _Pikeness_. Love and friendship and understanding that radiated like the power of her Goddess, all warm and golden. It always made him feel just a little better. "So you really like her a lot, huh?"

That was a change of subject, and he wasn't quite ready for it. He suddenly didn't quite know how to answer that. "Well..." he thought about denying it for a second. No. Maybe to one of the others he might pretend otherwise, but Pike knew him too well. "Yeah." he shrugged a little bit. "She's nice. She is good at fighting. She likes ..." he did stop then. He didn't blush, but he somehow didn't think it was right to mention how sexy Trisha was. 

"You want it to be like it was before we left for the wedding." Pike said, as if she could see his thoughts better than he could. "You want it to be fun and nice and for her not to have been hurt. You want to help, but you don't know how."

He felt tears prickling at his eyes. "Yeah."

Pike nodded and reached up to set her hand on his arm. "For now, I think it is best if we give her plenty of space, but make sure she knows we're here to help her. When something like that happens, it's like ..." She seemed to be thinking of how to say it. "Like Scanlan's hamster ball. There's a big bubble that you can't see or touch all around her. Put up to keep her safe. To keep anything bad from getting in. Only... unlike Scanlan's ball... there's no telling when hers will go away. All you can do is just not try to break it down. You have to let it wear off in its own time." 

He kind of understood that. He'd seen the 'hamster ball' before. "It hurts me when she looks at me like she's afraid of me." He admitted it under his breath. "The letter said..." he shook his head. "It's all my fault." He hung his head and with a soft nickering sound of the horse moving, he felt Pike's hands on either side of his face turning his head to look at her as she now stood in the saddle. 

"Stop that. It's not your fault. Who said it was? That letter? Written by an asshole who would hurt women? Why are you even giving a shit about what he says?" Her tone was almost angry and she made him look at her. "Is he right, or is he a liar, and a bastard, and a ... bad guy?"

Grog's brain hurt, but the fish swam freely. He saw flashes of memory. Of Keyleth and Raishon. Of Percy and Ripley, of Kevdak. Bad people who used lies and twisted the truth to make you so mad you acted without thinking. No. He wasn't good at it, but he had to think first, act later. Vedmyer was a liar. So, the letter was lies. He'd hurt Trisha because he was evil. It had nothing to do with anything else. If letting him live had been a mistake, it was one that was about to be rectified. 

Trisha pushed through the trees, having given up the deer paths to shove her way through the mesh of low-hung branches of cedar and pine, the undergrowth thin but littered with dead needles that like a carpet muffled her footsteps, though the grunts and rustling were far from stealthy. The trees thinned a bit eventually and she was in a clearing likely made by a strike of lightning a few decades ago. The trees here were hardly more than saplings, the ground covered with thick ferns and tall flowering bushes that made the glen seem almost fantastical. 

She stood, her skin burning from the thousands of tiny cuts that the limbs and needles had left behind, her body shaking. Panic, fear, sadness, guilt, shame... it overwhelmed her and she couldn't breathe. The space seemed to speak to her. To calm her. As she looked around, she could see dark twisted stumps, blackened and burned like the inside of that shop, but each of one was covered with some kind of new growth. one even had a smaller tree shooting up from the center. A thought came from nowhere that, in time, the new one would crack through the old and shatter it. It would triumph. Life won. Always. 

A wave of something like that healing spell washed over her. She shattered and like tossing one of the sword dummies into a corner, she dropped onto her knees and hands, face in the dirt, clawing through the grasses and the soil, tears running down her face as she panted and whimpered. When there was a hole made, she collapsed over it and vomited. Great horrible waves of misery were vomited out into the ground as she curled up and dug her fingers in the black soil, her body wracked with sobs. 

She wept for herself, but also for the women who had not escaped Vedmyer alive, and for the one who had. The one she had betrayed. She wept until she had no more tears. Screamed herself hoarse and then, with hands filthy and bleeding, pushed the dirt back into place to bury her pain, both figuratively and literally. 

She had just pushed down the mess of dirt and grass into place when something heavy and dark flew past her nose and hit the spot with a thud. She'd only the instant to recognize it as a waterskin as she looked up. What first she took to be a girl on horseback was soon enough recognized to be a centaur. She dropped her hand instinctively to her waist were the sword was but she quickly took in the creature and held back the urge to draw for now. 

The centaur was young. It had an elven look to it, as half-elf children did, the ears, the more slender build, but there were muscles that clung to the delicate frame in a way that made her seem much more physically impressive. Her coat was a mingling of grey and black, the hooves dark and glossy as ebony as she moved back a step. Her hair was cut very short, her skin was tanned and she wore what seemed to be braided cloth material that covered her torso like a sort of padded garment, no doubt to protect from the same branches that had left Trisha so scraped up. 

"Is water. Drink." Her accent was sharp though her voice was young. Perhaps younger even than Trisha had first guessed, poised at the point between child and teenager. 

"Th-thank you." She took up the skin and drank deep, the tepid water washing away the taste of her purging and she was breathless but quenched when she lowered it. "I... " She realized she didn't know what to say. "I was on the road and I went for a walk and... I'm sorry. " She held the water skin out as she stood up. 

The centaur took a quick step back, a hand moving to pull a spear from the ground that had been, until then, obscured by her horse half. The point hovered in the air between them, and, after a moment, Trisha hung the water skin on it and the centaur lifted the tip and the skin slid down the shaft to be pushed up over her shoulder, never losing her grip on the spear. "I heard the noise and thought you were one of the spirits that haunt this wood." She gave a humorless chuckle. "Why do you make this noise?" 

"I... I was just very upset. I didn't mean to be overhead at all." Trish ran her dirty hands over her thighs to clear them, aware of what a mess she must be. The tracks of tears in the dirt betrayed and shamed her. She would rather bleed than weep any day of the week. 

"That way to the big road." A gesture with the weapon. "Go before something worse than me finds you here." The young centaur turned and walked back toward the trees across the open space, pausing only to lean down and snatch up a dead buck by the rack and drag it up across her back before moving into the trees and vanishing with only the faintest rustling of branches. 

Trisha's departure was quick, but nowhere near as quiet. She took her time circling back to the road and when she got there some of the others had arrived. Grog was standing close, but as she walked past him, he stepped back visibly. It hurt her to see him shun her so, as if she had some kind of plague he'd catch if he got too close. She grit her teeth and said nothing though, choosing instead to move toward the Lord of Castle Whitestone who was in deep conversation with the red-headed druid on the other side of the road. She had seen people scry before. She waited until the woman seemed back in the here-and-now before she spoke. 

"So, where is he?"


	8. Chapter 8

The thud of hoofbeats had now shifted to a slow, quiet movement through the trees. The path he had taken was not wide, nor commonly used. He had turned to the west and, if the druid was right, made haste toward the Mooren Run River. 

She and her escort had departed after the scrying. She was Voice of the Tempest, whatever that meant, and had to return to her people before they had a fit of apoplexy because she was late getting home. Trisha had told herself she was angry with the redhead because she'd left them, but as the miles stretched on and she had nothing to do but think, she eventually came to understand that it was envy, not anger that filled her. 

She saw a woman who had lost so much, but still felt she had a place. A purpose. Trisha had always lived with a feeling that the world was a transitory place. She loved Whitestone, but she never put true roots there. She would die to defend it, almost had more than once, but in the end, she did not feel what the druid obviously felt. That she was vital to anything or anyone. 

Glancing toward Grog's wide back, she stared down the bear that flexed and twitched and made faces at her as the skin it was a part of shifted with every subtle movement. Since she had returned from her purging in the woods, he had been different. He barely looked at her now, much less his usual playful leering whose absence was like a dagger in her heart. Not that she wanted to. Thinking about it made her whole body lock up and go ice cold and fearful and she hated that, but it would have been nice to be able to pretend she wasn't ruined in his eyes. 

Amidst the trees, a slowly creeping fog had begun to leave the trunks slightly hazy. Ahead of them, it seemed to thicken and drift like a slowly closing wall. In a few hundred yards, they would be blanketed in it. At the head of the line, Lord DeRolo threw a hand up and the line slowed and stopped as he dismounted, his hand resting at his hip. Each rider likewise dropped onto the road and they met midway. 

"This could get a bit rough. We need to be stealthy but..." he eyed the large warhorse and the tiny gnome with equal measure of 'well that ain't gunna happen' evident in his eyes. "...if we can't, we'll need to be prepared and ready to move on a moment's notice." The blues shifted to her and Trisha stiffened to attention under her Lord's gaze out of habit. "Trisha, you up to this?"

She frowned a bit. "Sir, I may have suffered a blow, but if I can stand, I can fight, and if I can't stand?" She lifted her chin. "I'll take them on from the knees down." 

His too-serious mien took a slight hint of amusement and he gave a single nod. "Well said. Alright, mount up. Grog, you move to the front with me. Pike and Scanlan, you take the middle. Trisha, I trust you to take the rear." He gave a nod and moved to mount back up. 

She likewise walked back to step into the stirrup and pull herself up and onto the back of the dappled gray. That Lord DeRolo had her at the back of the line was a testament to his trust in her. The middle was where the weaker members went. The line moved again, and the fog closed around them until it was almost impossible

The fog stole sight, but also seemed to dull sound. She kept her hand on the handle of the sword laid across her thighs as they rode, tense and ready to defend. A half-hour... an hour... two... and there was no sense of progress. Only the same all-encompassing misty gray and the dark shadows of flanking trees. There had been no chatter, no conversation, only that heavy-handed feeling of portent. The road under them seemed to be widening. The horses, herd animals by nature, sought to move closer to one another as it shifted into what might be a clearing of sorts. 

From behind them, a sound rose, a single note that set the hair on the back of her neck to prickle. A high-pitched howl that, in an instant, was joined by another, and another, each coming from a different direction. As one they reined their mounts to stop just as the wood erupted with dark shapes. She was knocked from her saddle, but went with it, rolling to find her feet and swinging outward with her blade. The figure before her, half lost in the thick fog, was at least as tall as Grog, a massive furred body that resembled nothing less than a combination of bear and man, a wide maw of sharp teeth and long furry arms ending in massive paws, each tipped with razor-sharp black claws that swung at her, barely missing her face as she adopted a defensive posture. 

She feigned a move left but aimed right with her sword, the feel of the steel catching flesh followed in an instant the beast's bellow proving she'd struck. She could not think of the others, only what enemy was before her, but still she registered the shouts and attacks of her party members who were no doubt facing creatures no less dangerous. She knew it was a were-bear. There were tales that reached Whitestone of their existence but like the centaurs, she had never personally seen one until this trip into the Parchwood. It swung out and caught her in the thigh, a spurt of blood and pain nearly taking it from under her as she pulled one of the daggers from her waist. She could feel the thick, hot stickiness of the blood pouring, soaking her pantleg and filling her boot but she fought on anyway, using the sword blade as a shield almost, held sideways to block any downward swing as the smaller dagger was used to hack at any part that came into reach. 

"Enough!" a cry from the head of the line and almost instantly a chorus of howls and bellows that sent the bear to stumble back, lips quivering over bared teeth as it retreated a step, watching her warily with beady black eyes. Another feral cry and it slid back into the fog, vanishing. Trisha did not, however, feel even a little better. She wanted the fight, Battle had made her feel whole and right but now that it was over she only felt cold and hurt and lost. She knew she had to deal with her leg. Stabbing the sword into the ground, still in easy reach, she kept the dagger in hand as she dug into the hem of her tunic. As all uniforms, a long strip of cloth was sewn into the seam, easily torn free to be unrolled and used to bind injuries without having to seek aid. It wasn't much, but it slowed the flow of bleeding. Her thigh throbbed and each step with her left foot squished in a gross manner, but she could still walk. 

She could hear voices, but see no one. She had just reclaimed the sword from the ground when a stinging pain infused her thigh, a sharp stab that almost took her leg out from under her again, but it was only that instant of pain then nothing. Somewhere in the fog, the little gnome had done it again. Slightly grumpily, she began to unwind the now ruined strip of cloth. It was a shame healing spells did not get the blood out of cloth or from inside one's boot. Judging by the sounds around her, she had not been the only one to be affected by the spell. Winding the horse's reins around her fist, she walked cautiously forward, seeking the rest of them. 

As she'd suspected, the road did widen to a clearing of sorts where the road branched off to two separate roads. In the center, Lord DeRolo stood, alongside the small pale-haired gnome, beside the prone figure of a man. He was grievously injured, if his clothing could be used to judge, but like herself, he must have been aided by the healing. Additionally, he had a bottle in his hand that was emptied, too small to hold much in the way of alcohol. She could see the fringes of the woods where the dark trees stood unmoving and yet there were shadows that did shift faintly. 

The figure slowly rose to his feet, and the tattered rags that hung limply, clutched in his fists, were soon filled out as the body bent and stretched, pale skin sprouting heavy dark tufts of fur that erupted and spread like a spilling of ink across paper until he stood, seven feet at least, his canine muzzle and claws screaming 'wolf' but his eyes and body still much like a man's. The rags now hung from massive hips to act like a loincloth. From the woods, a figure separated itself from the fog-bound shadows and joined him. This wolf was a good foot taller, broader at the shoulders, and every part screamed 'leader' from the rows of gold earrings and heavy bracelets of gem-encrusted silver to the spear whose head and shaft were marked with blood-streaked runes. 

His voice was gutteral and his words clipped as he answered whatever question Lord DeRolo had asked, but he gestured toward the road leading southward and then, in a sudden lurch, he and his companion sprang away and within seconds, the howls rose again, fading and vanishing as swiftly as they had come. 

"What happened?" She felt more than saw Grog moving back toward his horse which stood grazing by the roadside as if nothing were amiss. 

"Oh, you know how werewolves are." He said with a blase tone. "All 'do us a favor or we'll eat you'" He huffed softly and rolled his massive shoulders. His eyes rolled over her and she saw him notice the bloody and torn pants, but he said nothing. 

"A favor?" She would not even consider the other part. "What did they want?"

"Seems old Veddy-mire shot their leader's baby brother. He almost died but Pike fixed him up and because of that favor, they said we can go. If we want to come back through here though, gotta bring his head as a trophy." 

"Ah, well, then at least Vedmyer's good for something." She gave a halfhearted chuckle. 

He looked at her strangely, just staring with his brows pulled low over his eyes for several seconds before he screwed his mouth up and then sharply huffed through his nose and turned, pulling his horse to follow as he walked away. She watched him vanish into the fog, then with self-recrimination and shame crushing her, she forced herself to follow.


End file.
